Despite the fact that he did not have an engineering background, Mr. Neal was an innovator in the pavement maintenance industry, pushing development of equipment in an effort to improve efficiency and sealer application speed. He founded Neal Manufacturing Company in 1978 in Sand Hill, GA, with one employee and began manufacturing a ride-on applicator, a 175-gal. squeegee machine. Since then he was instrumental in numerous developments and innovations that have helped grow the pavement maintenance industry.

"At that time people were doing sealcoating as a business, but it definitely became more efficient and more profitable once that machine was introduced," said Brett Neal, one of Mr. Neal's sons and marketing manager of Neal Mfg.. "From that point on it was always his goal with the equipment he built, including the piston pump, to increase profit for the contractor."

Brett Neal says that at the time Mr. Neal introduced the ride-on applicator most sealcoating contractors were applying sealer out of buckets and by hand, so the ride-on unit attracted a lot of attention. Mr. Neal followed it four years later with a 210-gal. model, the largest in the industry at that time.

"Harold was an industry icon. He was a visionary with equipment," said Mark McLeod, vice president of Maintenance Inc., and a close friend and business associate of Mr. Neal's. "He was more than a pioneer in the equipment business for pavement maintenance contractors, he was a there for the guys who were just starting out, teaching them how to do the work and extending them credit when they really didn't have anything to back it up."

The next step in the evolution of the sealcoating business was the spray applicator, and while Mr. Neal wasn't the first to bring that machine to the market, he went to work improving what was available. O'Dell Manufacturing built the industry's first spray sealer applicator, a 200-gal. machine powered by a Roper steel gear pump. But that machine had no agitation and could not spray sealer mixed with sand.